Introducing the Chatbot API

Getting started with chatbots and APIs

Join us in welcoming aboard our newest addition to our chatbot offering! The SnapEngage Chatbot API allows you or your developers to create your own chat bot or build a connection with third-party bot providers. Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence have been buzz words for quite some time. The Chatbot API easily allows you to customize the entire visitor experience and can save your chat agents heaps of time.

That can all seem a bit intense, so let’s break it down. First, what is a chatbot? According to G2Crowd, a chatbot is either powered by pre-programmed responses or artificial intelligence to answer a user’s questions without the need of a human operator. Chatbots can work 24/7 to provide the best customer experience possible to your visitors and clients.

Why would anyone need a chatbot, and what goals can chatbots help achieve?

Chatbots allow you to be there for your clients and site visitors at all times, regardless of how busy your internal team is. You can allow your clients to reach you anytime through a self-service model of chat, freeing up your team to work on other projects or to only chat with those site visitors who need an extra human touch. Visitors and clients have the option to chat with a human at any time, bringing your sales team more qualified leads. The support and client success teams will also be able to chat with more informed clients who may have already searched your internal help documentation.

Chatbots can also be built to stay on-brand with the rest of your marketing materials and website. It can provide uniform answers across the board to deliver the same brand experience. We suggest using chatbot transcripts as learning materials for new employees so that your brand can become second nature for your chat team.

What is an API?

An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a set of functions and procedures allowing two applications to talk to each other. Think of an API like a bridge between different applications. API’s are very helpful and can cut down on developer time and resources. For example, an interactive Google map embedded on a website works because of an API. Without the API, web developers would have to create their own maps and provide all the necessary data just to have a map show up on a website.

Why use the Chatbot API?

Our Chatbot API provides even more customization to the chat experience for your site visitors and clients, and can free up more of your chat agents’ time so they can focus on more qualified leads. The Chatbot API is designed to be used by those who have some developer resources handy or for those who have developer knowledge as setup does require some engineer work. You or your web developer have the ability to design conversations, answer frequently asked questions, even route the chat to a human agent when the situation calls for it. By creating custom workflows for the chatbot to answer, you can ensure that all site visitors are receiving the same level of care, correct answers, and ensure chat conversations are on brand.

Using the Chatbot API to chat with site visitors

The Chatbot API makes it easy for you to customize the entire visitor experience. All of the tools are at your disposal and you can create as many questions and answers for your site visitor as you’d like.

Using the Chatbot API will help scale your business. Your live chat team may not be able to answer every chat 24 hours a day in a timely manner. The chatbot can help pick up the slack.

In addition to all we discussed, the chatbot will be able to follow some of the same commands that your human team can. A big piece of this is routing capabilities. While chatbots can be extremely helpful to your team and can help streamline sales leads and customer support queries, it is important that the bot can also recognize when a real human would be a better fit for the site visitor. For that reason, the chatbot can transfer the chat to a human agent at anytime. And not just an agent in one particular widget, the bot can transfer the chat to a human in the same widget, different widget, even to one specific human. Routing to a human agent will help keep your site visitor from getting frustrated if they need more information or just want to talk to a person.

The SnapEngage Chatbot API is still in beta, so we want to hear from you! Chat with us about your specific scenarios and where you think the chatbot can help your exact situation. Since no two bots have to be alike, there are endless opportunities for you and your team moving forward into the chatbot space – no need to limit yourselves! Share with us your stories and we will tell you how we can help.

See how the Chatbot API can streamline your business

Introducing the Auto Responder

You would love to be available to your clients and site visitors at all times, but that is not feasible. The challenge is to be as available as possible and still support clients when you are not immediately available. In chat especially, clients expect answers (or at least engagement) almost immediately. Let SnapEngage work harder so your chat team can focus on day-to-day duties, lead/customer follow-up, and generally delighting your client base. We recommend turning on the Auto Responder as a quick solution to elevating your online presence.

An Auto Responder is a time-based message that is automatically sent on your behalf. Auto Responders can work for different tools, like website live chat and email. In a chat scenario, the Auto Aesponder sends a message directly to a site visitor on your website who is interested in chatting with your team. This does not necessarily mean that your team is not online and available to receive chats, they could very well be. However, in this day and age humans have become increasingly distracted and pulled in different directions, chat agents included.

Even when your chat team is busy chatting with other prospects and clients, you want to be able to engage with your site visitors in not just a timely manner, but in robust fashion as well. The window for a timely response to clients is getting shorter and shorter as consumers crave fast responses today more than they ever have before. But do not fear! This is exactly where the Auto Responder steps in. The Auto Responder can work as the first touchpoint with a site visitor, letting them know that your team is excited to connect with them. This gives your chat agents a few seconds to wrap up ongoing chats or emails so they can focus on the task at hand: delighting your site visitors.

seconds is a suggested Auto Response time

The Auto Responder message will help set the expectation for a delayed response, reduce annoyance and increase customer satisfaction and survey scores.

Why use the Auto Responder

You can take charge of setting clear response expectations for your clients and prospects. A common mistake is to leave clients in the chat queue with no notice of when a human agent might be ready to assist. One minute waiting in a chat queue could feel more like five minutes to a website visitor, especially when they have no idea when they will reach a live agent. The Auto Responder takes out the guesswork for a better overall chat experience. The Auto Responder also allows you to be transparent with your clients about why they may not receive an immediate answer. You are politely letting clients know that your team is busy, they are valued, and you are excited to assist.

Chat agents will feel less pressure to jump at every available chat. This may sound like a bad thing, but too much quickness (especially for newer chat agents) could accidentally result in unnecessary typos and/or poor, rushed customer interactions. Allowing your live chat software to work harder on your behalf will open the door for more positive client interactions for your internal team. Chat analytics will also flourish because chats previously denoted as “Not responded” will dramatically decrease.

Auto Responder best practices

As a best practice, we recommend setting the Auto Responder to between 25-35 seconds to let site visitors know you are there. Encourage a delightful client experience by coupling the Auto Responder with Chat Reassignment. Set chat re-assignment for a few seconds after the Auto Responder to satisfy the site visitor while transferring the chat to other members of your team who may be more readily available.

Another key tip: Use your brand voice and keep it human. We suggest a message that sounds like something your team would actually say or is even a bit creative if relevant to your brand voice. For instance, this would be a great Auto Responder message for an aerospace company: “We apologize for the delay, we are working on launching the next human into space! We will get back to you as soon as possible. Feel free to leave us a message if you have to jet.”

The Auto Responder is an easy and quick way to engage your clients and site visitors, set clear response expectations, and make chat more cohesive with your brand voice. It allows businesses to customize the message you’d like to send so you can connect with more clients than ever before. This way, chat can be available even when your chat agent team is busy and can’t respond immediately.

Learn more about the Auto Responder feature

Month: July 2019